PERIKLIS PAVLIDIS - The Rise of General Intellect & the Meaning of Education 10-01-2003

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The Rise of General Intellect and the Meaning of Education. Reflections on the

Contradictions of Cognitive Capitalism

Periklis Pavlidis

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract

In contemporary capitalist economy knowledge generating becomes part and parcel

of material production and man, as the bearer of intellectual capacities, the principal

productive force. In this reality, education came to mean the formation of the

“general intellect”: the cultivation of mind and the development of consciousness, of

its moral, aesthetic and philosophical form. At the same time the “cognitive

capitalist” economy undermines and distorts “general intellect” in its effort to

subordinate the workers’ intellectual activity to the imperatives of commodity

production. Therefore the prospects of an authentic knowledge society can only be

conceived in terms of transgression of the capitalist mode of production.

Key words: cognitive capitalism, consciousness, education, general intellect,

intellectual labour.

Introduction: The tendency to the intellectualization of labour

A fundamental feature of modern developments in the character of labour in advanced

regions of the capitalist world is the appearance and rapid expansion of the so called

“ post-Fordist” phenomena, the setting up of flexible production networks which use,as their integral part, the dynamic optimization of knowledge for continuing

innovation in technologies and products. The cascading changes observed in the

fields of science, in its technological applications and in labour relations, have led to

different interpretations of the fundamental contradictions and trends of capitalist

society. Of special interest, in this respect, are the theories of the post-operaismo

(post-workerism) school.

Paulo Virno, referring to post-Fordist capitalism, holds that the law of value and of

labour-time is going through a very deep crisis as the result of the emergence of

“general intellect” which “comprises formal and informal knowledge, imagination,

ethical inclinations, mentalities and ‘language games’” and represents the mentalfoundations of all types of economic activity (Virno, 2007, 4-5). The notion of

“immaterial labour” is used in a similar way to that of “general intellect”. According

to Maurizio Lazzarato, the ever-expanding - in modern capitalism - immaterial labour

is “the labour that produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity”

(Lazzarato, 1996, 133) and is structured in forms “that are immediately collective”

(Lazzarato, 1996, 137). The expansion of immaterial labour at the start of the 1970s

signals a major transformation in production, the expansion of communication

technologies and the enlargement of intellectual procedures, which requires

“subjectivities that are rich in knowledge” (Lazzarato, 1996, 134). Michael Hardt and

Antonio Negri speak (with a big dose of exaggeration, forgetting the huge amount of

manual labour which is still used for handling the means of production) about theimmediately social and common character of modern labour: “all forms of labour



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are today socially productive, they produce in common” (Hardt & Negri, 2004, 106).

They claim that, from a quality point of view, immaterial labour prevails creating the

“immaterial products, such as knowledge, information, communication, a relationship,

or an emotional response” (Hardt & Negri, 2004, 108). Despite the fact that

immaterial labour does not yet prevail, from a quantitative point of view, it

nevertheless sets the pace for the evolution of other forms of labour, which must become intelligent, communicative, affective (Hardt & Negri, 2004, 109). It is worth

noting Carlo Vercellone’s view, who qualifying capitalism as “cognitive”, claims that

the determining factor of the system of social production is labour ’s intellectual

quality, or “diffuse intellectuality”, with the result that the capital – labour relation is

marked by the prevalence of knowledge in production, by the ever growing

immaterial and cognitive character of labour (Vercellone, 2007, 13-16). This causes

great difficulties for the capital, reversing the real subsumption of labour under capital

(Vercellone, 2007, 13-16).

It would not be possible, in the present text, to fully analyze the theories mentioned

above, against several points of which one could raise critical objections1. Importantlyhowever, these theories bring to the fore the crucial tendency for a radical upgrading

of the significance of the intellect and knowledge in modern labour, for an

enhancement of the latter’s social character and the major difficulties the capital

encounters in the exploitation of labour thereof. This upgrading directly influences, in

turn, the role of education in the formation of the labour subjects.

Here we should note that the debate on the prospects of a “cognitive society”, from a

marxist point of view concerns the detection of the basic trends in the development of

labour, of the essential contradictions of modern capitalism and the conditions-

1I consider highly problematic the concept of "multitude" that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have

suggested. Presenting "multitude" as “an open and inclusive concept”, “an open and expansivenetwork” in which “differences can be expressed freely and equally” (Hardt & Negri, 2004, xiii-xv)

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri fail to define it elementary. "Multitude" is everything and yet

nothing concrete. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri downplay the notion of the working class whose

essential opposition to the capital constitutes the determinate relationship of the bourgeois society.

Thus, they get away from the cause of class struggle and from the fundamental historical purpose of

emancipating labour from the power of capital. For this reason “Empire”, an equally vague social

entity, appears in their thought as the opponent to the “multitude”, while the projected objective of the

social struggle is the abstract notion of democracy which, devoid of a certain class content, refers to a

typical petit-bourgeois perception of state power. The notion of “immaterial labour ” introduced by

Lazzarato, Hardt and Negri, is equally vague, almost meaningless, and distracts us from the essential

distinction between manual and intellectual labour.In relation to a crucial for post – operaismo notion of autonomy, which refers to the new qualities of the

workers as bearers of intellectual activities in post-Fordist economy, I would like to point out that the

content of this autonomy may be technical-organizational but not a social -class one. From the moment

that we are not dealing with a fully automated production system, so as for intellectual labour to be

immediately productive, the latter will have to hook up with the great volume of manual labour which

sets the means of production in motion. Intellectual labour is productive only to the extent that it is partof the total socially necessary labour, and as such, is connected with the still large scale of manual

labour. Under these circumstances, and for as long as the workers are not in possession of the means of

production (for as long as these means are not in a social-socialist ownership), the connection between

the workers (manual and intellectual) and the means of production and among the workers themselves

as well, is achieved by the capital, acting as an alienated from the wage workers social bond, via the

exchange of the wage for the commodity of “labour power”. From this point of view, I conceive the

real autonomy of knowledge workers vis a vis the capitalist class, as the liberation of the wholeworking class from the capitalist mode of production.



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possibilities for building an alternative emancipated from class relations and class

exploitation socialist society. Departing from that point of view in this paper we are

going to deal with the impact the upgrading of the intellectual character of labour in

education, while at the same time, attempting to trace the contradictions which govern

modern capitalism to the point that the latter tends to become “cognitive”. We shall

focus particularly on the Marxian idea of “general intellect”, the content of which weshall try to specify.

General intellect and its cultivation

In the history of humanity, the status of education in social division of labour has been

equivalent to the role of the intellect and knowledge in production and to the degree of

development of labour’s intellectual character. The most fundamental aspect of

education, its most important social dimension consists in the formation of labour’s

subject. The humans become par excellence subjects of labour as bearers of

knowledge and intellectual abilities and therefore as organizers and directors of

production forces and processes. The limited role of education in pre-industrialsocieties is accounted for by the extremely limited role of science and intellectual

activity in the functioning of the production system and to the fact that the vast

majority of the workers represent an amount of physical powers used as means for

implementing productive aims which are alien to them. In the social formations

preceding industrial capitalism, labour was as a rule manual. The use of manual tools

required physical effort rather than intellectual activity and mind development. An

elementary level of empirical knowledge was sufficient for the necessary labour -

related actions, for the construction and use of the manual tools. Young people’s

professional training had the character of an apprenticeship, that is, transmission of

empirical knowledge to the apprentice by the adults at the work place. Humans

learned while working, given that the use of manual tools, apart from some

elementary experience, did not require an organized, systematic and methodic

training of their personal resources.

The coupling between intellectual labour and material production began with the

industrial revolution which initiated the ever-expanding use of scientific knowledge in

the planning, production and operation of the means of production. Certainly, at first,

there was a great distance separating scientific research from the technological

application of its results. However, from the outset there was a constant trend towards

reducing this distance. In the system of industrial capitalism however, workers in their

great majority are the servants of machines and their activity is restricted toelementary and repetitive movements. Thus, the training of workers in industrial

capitalism followed the same pattern and is characterized by the fact it provides the

majority of them with a basic level of knowledge, such as reading, writing and

elementary mathematics, completed with a necessary vocational training, which is

what was required for them to be used as a homogenous and exchangeable human

power in the production system.

But in the 20th century, the capitalist mode of production entered the stage of an

unprecedented intensive development which is closely linked with the dynamic

transformation of science into a force of production, with the decisive role scientific

research played in technology development, in the organization and restructuring of the character of labour. In the decades of 70’s and 80’s the intensive development of




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capitalism is marked by the beginning of informatisation and complex automation of

production. These crucial processes coincide with the perspective pointed out by K.

Marx in relation to the development of the intellectual character of labour, insofar as

the “general social knowledge has become a direct force of production” and “the

conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the

general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it” (Marx, 1973, 706). Thefunction of general intellect equals to what K.Marx calls “universal labour ”: Universal

labour is all scientific work, all discovery and invention. It is brought about partly by

the cooperation of men now living, but partly also by building on earlier work (Marx,

1981, 199).

Intellectual labour, as universal, relies on general human intellect, on the use of

language codes, aesthetic forms, concepts, scientific knowledge. It is carried out by

means of “tools” which can be used simultaneously by each individual separately and

at the same time belong to all human beings, without ever being alienated by their

agents. These “tools” compose the universal wealth of humanity. General intellect is

of a social character par excellence. Its formation and development is the work of allhumanity, present and past. General intellect is linked with the development of

sociality, with the shaping and maturing of social ties among humans. The rise of the

general intellect signifies the possibility and the prospect of replacement (under the

proper, socialist relations of production) within the production process of the

worker’s physical forces by their predominantly cultural-social forces, the prospect

of overcoming the separation between physical and intellectual labour, between

labour and culture. Workers, as the bearers of general intellect, can be a productive

force only as culturally developed personalities. K.Marx traced this tendency noting

that the worker

steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. Inthis transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs,nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his owngeneral productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development

of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth (Marx, 1973, 705).

To the extent that the general intellect tends to become the main production force, the

social importance of education is also being upgraded. The latter is becoming the

privileged space for the systematic transmission of knowledge as well as that for the

nurturing of the general intellect. It is not an accident, that in the developed countriesof the globalized capitalist system there is always talk about the necessity for

permanent contact with knowledge and life long learning for all. At the same time

there is an incremental increase in the number of educational institutes and students.

But what does education mean in the sense of cultivation of the general intellect? Of

course it means acquisition of fundamental knowledge about the human world,

society and its natural environment. As, however, genuine learning does not consist

merely of information memorizing, but is interconnected with specific mental

processes of analysis, reflection and understanding of that information, learning is

intertwined with exercising and cultivating of the mind. Therefore, the cultivation of

the general intellect is connected with the development of the mind’s cognitivecapacity so as to be in a position to move beyond sense experience and the



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phenomenality of things, to penetrate into their inner relationships, to grasp the

determining links between their different sides, to understand the causes for their

appearance, evolution and transformation and, of course, to discern the prospects for

this transformation. This is about the cultivation of the Reason, the dialectical thought.

At this point however, it should be pointed out that the specificity of education lies inthe fact that the humans not only acquire knowledge and mental capacities, but are

also conscious of this fact and take active part in the educational processes. Humans

as consciousness - bearing agents, know, not merely the objects which are

independent from their mind, but also themselves as subjects – consciousness bearing

agents, and as such, they do not merely possess knowledge but they can reflect on it

deliberately as well, exercise their critical faculty on the content of knowledge and the

cognitive process which led them to it, as well as on the ways their intellect operates.

On the one hand, consciousness means knowledge and understanding of the world and

of the self as an object. On the other, it means knowledge and understanding of the

self as a subject, and finally, understanding of the social ties between the self-subject

and the other humans -subjects2. Such an understanding of the self is identical to theawareness of his sociality, the social essence of every individuality. It means also the

ability to reflect upon the social consequences of every individual’s acts, feelings and

thoughts, so that he/she is in a position to assume responsibility for the objectives and

content of his/her life. It can be said that a developed consciousness characterizes the

individual who is in a position to reflect from a social view point on his/her life and

activity and to grasp the social significance of the manifestations of his/hers existence.

I consider therefore, that the general intellect which refers to the specific “means” of

intellectual labour, ought to be interpreted as social consciousness. Humans know and

reflect upon the world in their quality of a consciousness-bearing agents. Social

consciousness is the general, par excellence, “means” of intellectual labour, which, at

the same time, is the “property” of every distinct individuality and of humanity at

large.

Every human being as a consciousness-bearing agent and to the extent that he/she acts

consciously is defined as personality. According to V.A Vazjulin’s definition

“Personality is the human as an internal unity between the social and the

individual…” (Vazjulin, 1988, 195). Personality, in its most developed form, refers to

the individual whose vital activity emanates from the understanding of his innermost

and necessary tie with the other human beings and is a conscious activity “for the sake

of social interests, for the sak e of humanity…” (Vazjulin, 1988, 198). Given that

consciousness does not exist independently from the body, from the physicalindividuality of humans, we can claim that the subject of knowledge is man as

personality, as socialized individuality. Every human being perceives the world

through his/her personality. All the aspects of personality, physical and social ones

(idiosyncrasy, feelings, intelligence, the moral stance, the aesthetic ideals, the

personal view of the meaning of life) partake of the cognitive process3.

2 “Consciousness per se, in contrast to science and in general to the knowledge, to the cognitive

process, is destined to regulate the relations among humans as subjects and this fact presupposes also

necessarily the relations among humans as consciousness bearing agents” (Vazjulin, 1988, 157).3 “Whatever I know I know with my entire self: with my critical mind but also with my feelings, with

my intuitions, with my emotions” (Freire, 1998, 29-30).




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Precisely because man knows the world through his personality, his education is, to a

large extend, determined by the degree to which he is conscious of his social bonds

with other people, of the social essence of his individuality. The significance of

education for every individuality is defined by his/her social position in life, by the

social content which gives meaning to his/her life. If education is about the cognitive

assimilation of humanity’s achievements and of the social modes of activity, then theindividual’s interest for knowledge, the range and duration of his/her educational

endeavors correspond, in general, to the authenticity and depth of his/her interest in

humanity, in the needs, problems, achievements and prospects of society. At this

point emerges the importance of the conscious elements of learning (moral attitudes,

perceptions of the meaning and purpose of life, ideals) which shape the framework for

the quest and evaluation of the social importance of knowledge. In this respect,

education means of course the shaping of universal capabilities of the mind but also

the development of the forms of social consciousness (its ethical, aesthetic and

philosophical forms), the formation of humans as personalities.

The cultivation of social consciousness and the formation of personality as keyelements of education render the pedagogical relationship indispensable, given that

intellectual faculties and forms of social consciousness can only develop through the

interaction of personalities. Only within the pedagogical relationship, as experience of

emotional communication, moral bond, dialectical - collective thinking does the

fundamental development of the mind and consciousness become possible. Education,

as pedagogical relationship, is intricately associated with the educators’ necessary

role, as people who do not merely transmit information, but contribute with all the

aspects of their personality to the shaping of their students’ consciousness and

personality. Taking into account that educators’ work involves using the general

intellect, which means the activation not only of their knowledge but of the whole

content of their consciousness, of all the cultural wealth of their personality (feelings,

mental capabilities, moral principles, aesthetic ideals, philosophical worldviews), for

the success of their pedagogical work, it becomes necessary for them to develop as

bearers of the “general intellect”, as personalities. The fundamental development of

educators’ general intellect (consciousness) is of paramount importance to the

successful accomplishment of their mission.

The specificity of the ability to intellectual labour

But how can reproduction and development of the general intellect (consciousness),

as the fundamental labour capability of educators, and all other knowledge workers beachieved? In cases of manual labour there is a clear distinction between labour time,

during which the labour power is spent, and leisure time, during which this power is

restored. Labour time is a key factor for the capitalist exploitation of labour power, in

the sense, that on the one hand, the length of the working day must be extended to a

maximum level (production of absolute surplus-value), and that on the other hand, the

time necessary for the production of means required for workers’ individual

consumption must be continuously reduced, and the value of the labour power be also

reduced thereof, so more surplus-value will be produced per unit of labour time

(production of relative surplus-value).

Under the conditions of industrial capitalism, the dominant rule for the overwhelmingmajority of manual workers is the mere reproduction of their labour power in order to



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serve a mechanized production system, providing extremely meager possibilities for

its qualitative, cultural development. The workers’ leisure time is dedicated to this

very end. The exploitation of manual labour in the industrial capitalism economy is

not associated with the need for real cultural development of the workers, neither in

labour nor in leisure time. The reproduction of the spent labour power is of a

consumerist character. In most cases it is connected with the absence of activity, with passive consumption and not with engaging in creative activities4.

Things however change drastically upon emergence of the general intellect as a

fundamental element of modern workers’ labour power. General intellect or peoples’

consciousness, while to a certain degree depends on the terms of individual

consumption, on the satisfaction of biological needs, it is mainly formatted and

developed within the very processes of its activation – application. Individual

consumption constitutes the physical condition of general intellect. On its own

however, it cannot create or develop general intellect. The formation and development

of general intellect is associated with the various versions of intellectual labour and

cultural activities of people and is decisively determined, not in terms of rest (i.e.absence of activity) but, on the contrary, in terms of labour – activity. The intellectual

capabilities required for the creation, transmission and application of knowledge are

formatted and developed in the course of the intellectual – cognitive activity itself.

Furthermore, the formation and use of these capabilities can not be restricted within

specific labour time limits. General intellect is present, in different ways, in the whole

scope of every day human activities and social relations, the quality of which impacts

its efficiency decisively. New research hypotheses and ideas, original theoretical

conclusions may appear at any time, often quite unexpectedly. Here, the traditional

juxtaposition between necessary labour time and free time, between labour and leisure

practically becomes devoid of meaning5.

Thus, intellectual-cognitive activities cannot be measured by labour time. Intellectual

work cannot be restricted within specific time limits as it cannot be evaluated by

quantitative indicators and be remunerated by their money equivalent. In such a case,

productivity is not determined by labour time, by the volume of abstract labour spent

within a given period of time. Production intensification and control over workers ’

personality necessary for its accomplishment not only they don’t develop the general

intellect but they cause its ultimate degradation and consequently destroy its

efficiency. General intellect effectiveness - "productivity" is determined not by the

conventional length of the working day, but by all the conditions under which

consciousness functions, by all the conditions under which formation anddevelopment of the individual personality take place. It is determined, in other words,

by the totality of the moments of social life.

It must therefore be emphatically pointed out that cognitive labour (scientific,

educational etc), in order to be effective, it must take place in conditions that are

4As David Riesman put it, “leisure itself cannot rescue work, but fails with it, and can only be

meaningful for most men if work is meaningful, so that the very qualities we looked for in leisure are

more likely to come into being there if social and political action fight the two-front battle of work-and-

leisure.” (Riesman, 1989, lvii).5

As Maurizio Lazzarato notes, in this case “it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish leisuretime from worktime. In a sense, life becomes inseparable from work ” (Lazzarato, 1996, 138).




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beneficial for the manifestation and development of general intellect, in the optimal

working and living conditions for the growth of the worker’s personality. This means

that labour as a general intellect activity, is by definition opposed to the worker’s

alienation from the conditions, means and processes of his/her labour activity. In other

words, knowledge workers’ labour and living conditions must be so structured as to

favor full activation and cultivation of their sensibility, intuition, imagination, their analytic , systematic and synthetic capabilities, all forms of their consciousness and

sociability and give full satisfaction to their inner need for creative activities.

The rise of general intellect is connected with the necessity to shift the interest from

the results of labour to the labour process and to the self-realization of human beings

within it. But this means focusing on the development of workers as the highest

purpose of labour and social life. This stance entails a radical change in the

relationship between living and dead labour. In capitalism dead labour, as

accumulated labour – as capital, prevails over the living labour. The latter becomes

the medium for the accumulation of dead labour. On the contrary, labour

emancipation means that the living labour activity, as a free – creative activity, becomes an end in itself for the workers. It is here necessary to note that the

expansion universally of labour as a creative activity in a society of comradeship

relations would effectively mean the transcendence of labour in the traditional sense

of the term, i.e. as we have known it so far in the history of society.

Labour for workers has so far been a painful, oppressive obligation. In the history of

class societies the meaning of labour for the workers themselves and for their

exploiters especially has been judged solely on the basis of its results and the degree

of their appropriation. However, labour as an aim in itself becomes culture, is

identified with all the activities which lie beyond the boundaries of material necessity

and have the purpose to reveal and develop human creativity. As culture we can

define labour which has been rid of utilitarianism, the requirements of physical needs

and has become a moral satisfaction, an aesthetic and intellectual enjoyment; it has

acquired in other words a formative – educational dimension for the humans. Here we

are referring to the par excellence Marxist perception of the genuine human activity,

the one that is suited to free individuals and is conducive to the actualization of their

powers, satisfaction of the inner impulse to create in freedom from immediate need

(Eagleton, 1990, 204). Victor A.Vazjulin, in his theory of communism, defines as

culture the mature social labour which has become an end in itself for all humans:

labour as an end in itself, labour for the satisfaction of inner physical andspiritual needs under the laws of truth, goodness and beauty, is no morelabour but culture in its multifaceted action, the life of culture in itsfundamental manifestations, a multidimensional cultural activity (Vazjulin,1988, 307).

But where does human’s innermost need for labour in the form of creative activity

originate in? I consider that this need relates to what Abraham Maslow calls “the self -

actualization need”, that is the intrinsic tendency in humans to become actualized in

what they are potentially, to manifest and develop their special characteristics. Self-

actualization means to become everything that one is capable of becoming. The inner

need for self-actualization relates directly to general intellect activities, various forms

of intellectual, research, scientific labour and manifests itself as a desire of original



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thinking, of a novel intellectual quest and exploration of new phenomena (Maslow,

1987, 130,161). In the core of this tendency for self-actualization lies the cultural

potential of humans, that is, knowledge, intellectual and practical capabilities,

acquired via education primarily, but also via social life experiences at large. The

educated – cultivated individual perceives the totality of his/her acquired capabilities

as an inner need for their activation, manifestation and further development. This is aman who is “as rich as possible in needs” because he is “r ich in qualities and

relations” (Marx, 1973, 409). As K.Marx points out, “The rich human being is

simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human manifestations of life –

the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need” (Marx,

1977, 89).

Thus, the more authentically and universally an individual is educated, the more

developed his/her cultural needs and primarily his/her internal need for creative

activity are. At this point however, it should be noted that the internal need for self-

actualization, for creative labour (and of course for creative intellectual activity) must

not be perceived as an egoistic endeavor for self-gratification. Self-actualizationceases to be authentic when it becomes a purpose in itself, when it is manifested as an

individualistic interest (even if it is of a cultural-educational content) which takes

precedence over the collective-social interest and may lead even to conflict with the

latter. Abraham Maslow states that “Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of

identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship

and connection, as if all people were members of a single family” (Maslow, 1987,

138). From this point of view it is worth mentioning Victor E. Frankl’s idea that the

real meaning of life does not lie in “self -actualization”, in the self-centered meaning

of this concept, but in the “self -transcendence of human existence”, in the dedication

of individual existence to something outside the self. In V.E.Frankl’s words,

being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfil or another human being to encounter.The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizeshimself (Frankl, 1992, 115).

Based on the above we can conclude that the strongest motivation for the general

intellect activity, except for the desire to exercise the individual cultural potential,

clearly is the desire to serve collective needs and purposes, the pursuit of collective,

social progress. Here, the individual’s sociality and morality, his/her conscious

dedication to other individuals and to humanity, shaped through the experiences of social life, are manifested as his/her strongest innermost impulse for creative activity.

Obviously, such an attitude is possible only when the formation of the individual’s

personality and his/her activities take place within social relations of comradeship and

solidarity.

The rise of general intellect and the contradictions of cognitive capitalism

The emergence of general intellect as a force of production upgrades significantly the

importance of education and of educators for the cultivation of students’

consciousness and personality. At this point it should be stressed that the work of

educators constitutes an activity par excellence of general intellect - of consciousness.

Educators work precisely as bearers of knowledge, feelings, mental capabilities, moral




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principles, aesthetic criteria, philosophical worldviews, social ideals etc. Therefore,

educators are intellectuals by definition.

The definition of educators as intellectuals is connected with the necessity for them to

reflect upon the social, political, institutional - organizational conditions and the

cultural, cognitive content of their work, to be able to combine theory and practiceachieving a real control over the purposes and conditions of their activity, on

principles and processes of the curriculum, at the service of the students’ growth as

personalities (Giroux, 1988, 9, 126). Educators are intellectuals, by definition, (but

unfortunately not always in esse), not simply because they are bearers of a certain

knowledge, but because in order to teach it they need to deeply understand and

critically evaluate its content. In order for someone to teach, he/she must be in a

position to reflect upon the dominant forms of knowledge in relation to the whole

reflection upon social reality (on the needs, problems, contradictions of the epoch)

and to the comprehension of the personalities he/she teaches.

Being a relationship between subjects, the educational process forms not only thestudents but the educators as well. Its success which consists in the growth of the

students as personalities is feasible only if it is accompanied by the growth of the

educators’ personality. Educators’ work, like every work relying heavily on the

general intellect, is decisively determined by the extent to which labour conditions are

favorable to the development of their intellect – consciousness and the degree to

which they are conducive to their self- actualization. As optimal conditions for the

fruition of the educational work are reckoned those that assure its realization on the

basis of the principle of creativity: of the strongest possible manifestation and

cultivation of the educators’ intellectual capabilities and wider cultural wealth of their

personality6. Therefore, if education is a determining field for the formation of

multifaceted developed personalities, of both students and their teachers, then its most

fundamental element appears to be that of solidarity and cooperation between the two

sides, the development of a deeply moral relationship between teachers and students.

As Paulo Freire put it, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher – student

contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are

simultaneously teachers and students” (Freire, 1972, 46). So apart from its purely

cognitive aspects the authentic education as a highly communicative activity, as a par

excellence moral relationship, consists in the cultivation of sociality of students and

teachers, in the development of their social essence and of the forms of consciousness

which are the psychic – ideal expression of this essence.

Taking into account the above assumptions, we can claim that the educational activity,

like any other activity relying on the general intellect, is by its “nature” opposed to the

relations and practices of alienated labour. This is however, where we encounter the

inevitable contradictions of capitalism, which make up its essential relations and

indicate their limits. The contradictory character of modern bourgeois society lies in

the fact that, on the one hand, the conversion of scientific knowledge into a direct

productive force greatly upgrades the significance of education in social life,

rendering continuous learning necessary. On the other hand, from the moment that the

6bell hooks claims that “teachers must be actively committed to a process of self – actualization that

promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students”, (hooks, 1994,15) and therefore, they have the “responsibility to be self -actualized individuals” (hooks, 1994, 16).



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workers become alienated from their own labour capabilities, their work does not

belong to or serve them, become also alienated from their education, in the sense that

the acquisition and use of knowledge and qualifications is determined, in principle,

by the capital’s needs and not theirs. The limit of humans’ education, as wage workers

in the capitalist society is their formation as bearers of the commodity “labour

power”. Any education, cultivation or growth they may have is subjected, more or less, to the necessity of forming a tradable labour power, i.e. a series of capabilities

and skills which must be useful to the capital.

While scientific – technological progress marks a trend towards a significant increase

of workers’ leisure time, under the conditions of capitalist production relations, this

trend takes on the bleak dimension of a fast growing mass unemployment (in its many

obvious and hidden forms), which, on the one hand poses a threat to the very

sustenance of people, and on the other, in the case of protracted deprivation of a

labour activity and labour relations, it entails painful frustrations, loss of meaning of

life, decay of the consciousness and personality. Life-long learning under these

circumstances is tantamount to a life-long agonizing effort to ensure the tradability of ones’ labour capabilities which become fast obsolete as a consequence of permanent

scientific – technological reversals. However, under the dominance of the modern

global capitalist market no one is in a position to know which special skills will

maintain their exchange value and which ones will lose it, while a large number of

those who have academic degrees are faced with the imminent threat of losing their

jobs.

In the so-called post-Fordist reality of continuous technological – productive

innovation, fierce global competition between multinational corporations, neo-liberal

generalized deregulation of the economy, the utmost shrinking of public goods, the

precarious employment and the decadence of relationships and collectivities humans’

sociality itself shrinks and becomes distorted7. The outcome of this is that social

consciousness, the psychic forms in which social bonds are reflected are seriously

undermined and destroyed8. The global domination of marketization, economic and

social antagonism, the absence of clear life prospects, the loose and fleeting social

ties, all contribute to the formation of a very fragmented consciousness. People

trapped in the routine of modern capitalism, are more and more at a loss how to form

a concrete and integral image of the world and equally at a loss how to place

themselves in it, to acquire self-knowledge. Richard Sennet refers to the “corrosion of

character”9. When life crumbles in short term activities in conditions where

7It is interesting that while several capitalist firms recognize the importance of collective labour and

communication skill development of the workers, at the same time they foster competition among them

undermining the creation of genuine collectivities. The workers are expected to have a collective

behavior, but they experience stress and anxiety in conditions where “the line between competitor and

colleague becomes unclear ” (Sennett, 2006, 52-53).8 Ulrich Beck makes an interesting observation saying that “As people are removed from social ties and

privatized through recurrent surges of individualization, a double effect occurs. On the one hand, forms

of perception become private, and at the same time – conceiving of this along the time axis – they

become ahistorical … the temporal horizons of perception narrow more and more, until finally in the

limiting case history shrinks to the (eternal) present , and everything revolves around the axis of one’s

personal ego and personal life” (Beck, 1992, 135).9

“A pliant self, a collage of fragments unceasing in its becoming, ever open to new experience – theseare just the psychological conditions suited to short-term work experience, flexible institutions, and

constant risk-taking” (Sennett, 1998, 133).




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everything seems uncertain, alien and threatening, the general picture of the reality

formed by the everyday consciousness can only be chaotic and irrational. While the

bourgeois society proclaims its loyalty to science, at the same time it fosters the

widespreading of an irrational consciousness.

Of course, the capitalist society rationalises various spheres of the system of production and of social life. It uses scientific knowledge and technological

applications in a wide range of human activities, and aims at fostering through

education a rational, calculating mind, so that people are able to handle technical

means in order to live in a cultural environment that requires precise actions based on

specific, logical links and rules. At the same time, the capitalist society through the

global, unregulated, antagonistic and destructive movement of its economic forces

reproduces in an ever larger scale a universally irrational reality within which it

becomes increasingly difficult to understand the fundamental interactions between

aspects of the system, the laws regulating social relations10. So the various

rationalizations of the capitalist economy and society coexist with universal

irrationality reflected in a spontaneous and widespread irrational everydayconsciousness. That is why, quite often modern individuals are in a position to make

decisions concerning particular issues of their life on the base of a technical

rationality, using parts of scientific knowledge and at the same time they adopt

irrational beliefs about society and the world as a whole, about the universal forces

and laws that govern their lives. From this point of view the triumph of scientific

rationality and of scientific education in modern capitalism, which seems to be the

catalytic triumph of the spirit of Enlightenment are accompanied by their total defeat.

It must be emphatically stated that the decline of social ties, the destruction of

sociality entail inevitably the destruction of consciousness, of the general intellect,

which is something that undermines the formative potential of education.

The decadence of education in modern capitalism, which claims its “cognitive”

nature, is further aggravated by the decadence of the educational institutions, to the

extent that they are alienated more and more from the needs of society, being

subjected to the needs of capital. A crucial aspect of this process is the conversion of

education into a series of tradable services and the restructuring of public educational

institutions into independent market agents competing with each other in order to

increase their client base. This is exactly the quintessence of the neo-liberal

educational strategy (Hill & Kumar, 2009).

The result of the neo-liberal deformation of education is an ever growing alienationof educators from their work due to the bureaucratic control exercised over it. The

implementation of educational work is increasingly distanced from its planning which

is made over to administrative bodies – taken away from the educators. Standardized

teaching models with detailed outlines of duties and tasks are imposed on the

teachers, greatly restricting their capacity for initiative taking (Apple, 2000, 113-136).

Apart from that, in the name of educational services’ quality assurance, educational

institutions and teaching staffs are submitted to a continuous supervision – assessment

of their work, thus coerced into a competitive performance race, the results of which

10Georg Lukács refers to the characteristic of capitalist society coexistence of particular rationalizations

with the irrationality of its totality: “The capitalist process of rationalization based on private economiccalculation requires that every manifestation of life shall exhibit this very interaction between details

which are subject to laws and a totality ruled by chance” (Lukács, 1971, 102).



49 | P a g e

determine, more or less, their funding and employment prospects. Of course,

employment conditions of educators in all grades are characterized by their growing

destabilization, occupational insecurity and important pay cutbacks (Hill, 2007, 86-

89). It should be pointed out that the more antagonistic and estranged the teachers

become among themselves, the more the aggravation of their professional insecurity

and anxiety, the more the margins for real collegiality and cooperation shrink as wellas those of mutual enrichment via an exchange of their ideas and knowledge. As

Andy Hargreaves notes, “competition prevents schools and teachers from learning

from one another. People keep their best ideas to themselves” (Hargreaves, 2003,

168).

The dominant forms of assessment of educational workers and institutions in many

aspects manifest the capitalist ideology which sees in the abstract quantitative

evaluation of their performance the decisive driver of educational progress. The

evaluation as quantitative assessment of the intellectual, educational labour indicates

the treatment of this kind of labour as part of the universal form of abstract labour,

indicates the abstraction from any elements of specificity and uniqueness of theintellectual-educational labour, reflecting the diverse socio-cultural conditions in

which it occurs and the particular personalities involved in it. Owing to the fact that

the creations of general intellect (scientific theories, philosophic worldviews, aesthetic

forms, educational programs) reflect the uniqueness of consciousness, the specificity

of the personality of their creators, they are inherently unique and despite their many

common points, they are inherently non-comparable. Their "value" lies precisely in

their originality rather than in their uniformity. Subsequently, their creators can not be

treated as comparable and exchangeable, as mere agents of abstract labour.

Based on the above we can claim that the rise of the general intellect in the

contemporary capitalist system signals and accentuates an insurmountable

contradiction. On the one hand, the more this system is obliged to use knowledge and

intellectual labour for material production, the more it must ensure the best possible

conditions for the development of the personality of knowledge workers, scientists,

artists and of course educators. It must also ensure the proper conditions for the

development of the overall cognitive powers of society, given that scientific and

technological progress in our times is not the affair of some individuals alone, but

depends on the overall educational – cultural level of a society and on the overall state

of social consciousness. The conversion of general intellect to a direct productive

force makes necessary a life-long multifaceted education and development of every

human. Of course, a task of this magnitude would require the corresponding radicalrestructuring of labour relations and social relations at large in a collaborative-

comradeship way. To the extent however that the capitalist society will remain

capitalist, founded in the law of capital accumulation, i.e. exploitation of wage

workers, treated as the means to produce surplus-value, it will inevitably continue to

undermine the development of their personality, reducing the possibilities for them to

reveal and exercise their creative capabilities. The dominant relations of alienation

and competition bring about a decline in people’s sociality, their general intellect-

consciousness, and hence a decline of their creativity.

The rise of general intellect is indicative of the trend towards the maturing of the

social character of labour. In its technical dimension the mature social character of labour is defined by the automation of production, by the elimination (or at least by




50 | P a g e

the great reduction) of the direct physical involvement of humans in the production

process as servants -operators of hand tools and machines. In its human dimension

the mature social character of labour is defined by replacing the worker who is the

bearer of primarily physical forces and skills by the worker who is the bearer of

general intellect, social conscience and is involved in production as a collective

director of automated means of production, and of production processes.

The rise of general intellect in modern capitalism points at and brings to a culminating

point the fundamental contradiction between the maturing social character of labour

and the yet dominant capitalist exploitation of it. As opposed to manual labour, which

through various forms of control over the worker's body could be carried out in

conditions of class exploitation and yet be relativly productive, intellectual labour in

its authentic and permanently improving version, as a par excellence social,

collaborative, creative activity exceeds the limits of class exploitation and alienation

of labour. When this kind of labour is performed under conditions of exploitation,

then it inevitably looses its qualities. Intellectual labour (including educational labour)

in a knowledge society means labour of emancipated workers, linked together by bonds of comradeship and solidarity. In human history until now the development of

the system of production has been connected with the sacrifice and destruction of a

large part of workers’ forces and abilities, the distortion of their personality. Now,

in conditions of the dynamic development of the intellectual - social character of

labour the only way to social progress goes through the radical change of social

relations, the creation of an emancipated classless society in which "the free

development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Marx, 1986,

53).

The last global economic crisis having catastrophic consequenses for the working

class, including a significant proportion of knowledge workers, condemning them to

unemployment and poverty, further promoting flexible employment relations,

privatization of all public goods (including education), further undermining the social

relations, causing enormous damage on peoples’ consciousness, proves the

impossibility for capitalism to become an authentic cognitive society. Therefore we

should underline that the fundamental interests of knowledge workers, as bearers of

the most developed form of the social character of labour, stand in an inescapable

opposition to the dominant capitalist relations of production. Awareness of this

opposition on behalf of knowledge workers (including educators) would mean their

crucial, for the prospects of class struggle, conversion from class in itself to a class for

itself and for all humanity. This requires the awareness by them of their socialinterests as identical with the general class interests of the people of wage labour, with

the objective of universal social emancipation from all forms of class exploitation and

allienation. The prospects for the rise of a genuine cognitive society are now

definitely connected with the great cause of transgressing capitalism towards the

socialist reconstruction of all human relations.

Author Details

Periklis Pavlidis is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Education at the School

of Primary Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

E-mail: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





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PERIKLIS PAVLIDIS - The Rise of General Intellect & the Meaning of Education 10-01-2003